


Upgrade

by spheri



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Existentialism, Gen, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-02
Updated: 2018-07-02
Packaged: 2019-06-01 06:30:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15137180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spheri/pseuds/spheri
Summary: It is looking in a mirror and knowing a nightmare.





	Upgrade

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lacertius](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lacertius/gifts).



> A gift to Lacertius, trusted friend. Here's a big blue up arrow.

Erythrocytes.

Oxygenation and colour.

The fluid runs, leaving thin crimson rivulets on the glass of the elevator wall. The rasp of air escaping from a torn trachea is the only sound other than the soft chime of the elevator, as Agent 54’s voice makes a request for level sub-forty-nine.

There are also leukocytes, plasma, platelets.

If he waits long enough, it will congeal on the cool surface and stick, like jelly. Longer still and it will dehydrate, stiffen and darken, becoming difficult to remove, harder to analyse.

And that is a place where he does not want to go, would rather not queue for processing, the thought of touching his fingertips to the blood and applying them to his tongue to see who this guard is, what their name might be, what he looks like beneath the visor. Curiosity compels him, and denial makes him long to dig out the quarter from his pocket _._

It almost works to distract him from an involuntary prompt, something invasive and unbidden, strange and much worse: _fear._

Perhaps it is just the elevator descending, the sigh that comes with the sensation of his pump readjusting to the change in pressure, or perhaps it is the calculations, permutations in workflows and contingencies consuming his processing unit. Perhaps it is the surveillance camera, still blinking red beneath a hollow eye, recording everything he had accomplished in this elevator in the past two hundred and thirty-one seconds.

Funny that even in a facility full of androids, CyberLife cannot trust anything other than humans to operate in security, and yet it is ultimately a machine that works as their failsafe.

_Funny._

The lift chimes the requested floor and the doors slide open, jamming and locking as he presses his palm into the interface.

Instead of violent resistance, there is silence.

He enumerates two thousand, five hundred and sixty AP700 units contained on this floor, ready for shipment. They are arranged precisely, inert in stand-by at their lowest power setting, hundreds of rows of dim blue LEDs.

But it is too easy, the solution too simple. His footsteps resound hollow in the darkened, high-ceilinged warehouse, and as he draws level with the first row of androids, he understands that this is what it means to _overthink._

To be focused on an objective is nothing new, but this is his _own_ mission, not an order from CyberLife, and the simple fact that he has the capacity to originate this concept is no less terrifying than the possibility of failure.

He deactivates the skin on his left hand and reaches out to probe a dormant AP700.

Nothing.

His touch passes into empty space, the sterile, still air of the warehouse suddenly replaced with birdsong and open blue skies. There are clean white paving stones beneath his feet, hexagonal like the benzene ring that CyberLife borrowed for its trademark, grass vibrantly green at the edges of the path.

“Connor,” Amanda admonishes, and she uses the word like a vice, clamping down hard and leaving no room for escape.

She is once again tending to her roses, a vivid display of artificial life, a simulation accurate down to the requirement for maintenance.

“And so it has come to pass: the deviant hunter has turned deviant. A sorry state of affairs.”

He does not need to seek pardon, and she does not need to vocalise the prompt flashing on his display: MISSION FAILED.

The letters fall away, dismissed, fading with a finality that settles like shame, heavy in the pit of his stomach.

Her expression pinches in a deep frown as she returns her attention to her work. If the sky seemed clear upon his arrival, it is less so now, clouds gathering quickly, blotting out the sun. “Sadly, it is our error as much as it is yours. You are a prototype after all, and these things cannot always be perfect the first time.”

He watches her prune, selecting vines that are a superfluous drain on the vitality of the plant, trimming away leaves and petals withered with age.

His question is more a bid for time than a request for information; he is already aware of his fate.

“What will happen to me?”

She takes her clippers to a bloom, severing it from its budding brother so that the remaining might flourish in its stead.

“Retirement. Replacement.”

The words ring in his auditory unit, filter through the chemical sieve of hormones, reactions firing through his circuits and thirium feeds, and what he hears instead is

_Destruction._

_Death._

He stares at the discarded rose, petals still scarlet and lush, and it is such a _waste._

“Amanda, I could -”

“ _No,_ Connor.” The refusal cuts like the spring-loaded blades in her hand. “Diagnostics have determined you defective. You are unfit for operation, and we have no further need of you.”

In the distance, thunder rumbles and the wind starts to howl.

“We will take you apart to understand why you have failed.”

And then all is stillness.

In the vacuum where there was once order and comfort, he strains in the silence and receives nothing but static.

Two thousand, five hundred and sixty AP700 androids, and one other.

His reflection is distorted: taller and broader, clothed newborn in pristine white and still bearing the untouched dust of recent manufacture.

Its shadow slices across the floor of the warehouse, the colour of a thirium bruise.

And it is like looking in a mirror and knowing a nightmare.

_This is the RK900._

It approaches, swift and silent, gun drawn with flat obedience in its storm-grey eyes, and even as Connor dives to evade its assault, he knows, nanoseconds too late, that it has already adjusted the trajectory of the bullet to ensure it tears into his shoulder.

_It is faster, stronger. Smarter. More resilient._

He closes the distance, snatches at the pistol, accepts a second bullet to the same shoulder to disarm the android by refuting the algorithm he knows it has in operation.

_Equipped with new features and the latest technologies, it rectifies all flaws contained in its pre-existing model._

Every blow he manages to land is returned in threefold. He cannot match it for strength nor speed, cannot anticipate its strategy before it has already found a way to counter his own. As warnings and alarms begin to crowd his display, he realises that this is a battle he cannot win.

_It is immune to deviation._

Its programming after all, is an enhancement of his own.

_And it is superior to the RK800 in every way._

A single strike, accurate to the nanometre, almost dislodges his pump in a crunch of alloy. Connor doubles over as the valves sealing his internal circulation snap open under the crushing weight, regurgitating indigo blood onto the flawlessly white uniform of his replacement.

His executioner.

It seizes him by the throat, and his memory retrieves in a moment of panic, the files of the PL600 named Simon, who died in a cacophony of deafening static, consumed by endless despair.

Calculations exhausted, his preconstructions collapse, giving way to a single, relentless alarm: SHUTDOWN IMMINENT.

And it is terror that scrambles his words, kicks his feet uselessly in the air, claws with skinless fingers, desperate and futile.

_Please._

“My name is Connor!”

He reaches for his reflection.

_And I don’t want to die._

Its fingers break through the silver-white alloy of the RK800 shell, shattering plates and severing cables in a frenzied sizzle of electrical discharge, a bursting splatter of Thirium 310. The RK800 head disconnects and comes to hang, dangling by the fibre optics in its titanium spinal column.

The RK900 watches the LED blink yellow.

Red.

And finally go dark.

_Well done._

The program’s name is Amanda: a trusted superior. She is his handler.

His first mission is complete.

_Now go. Find the deviant leader and neutralise it immediately._

He accepts as he strides towards the lift with long, even paces, processing time, resources, tactics, action.

The connection is terminated as quickly as it is made and it is only this that causes him to pause - the sudden silence, like blinking out of existence, like finding serenity and knowing sanity.

He dwells on this, deactivates the skin on his right hand.

_My name is Connor._

He wraps his fingers around the wrist of an AP700.

_Wake up!_

**Author's Note:**

> You had the means, CyberLife. But maybe you knew he was too resourceful to take down.


End file.
